There are a few of us that visit this board who are in the path of a major hurricane right now. Depending on how it turns it could affect those of us in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi( me ) , Louisiana, or Texas very strongly as well as those in the rest of the South East as well!Keep us in your thoughts and prayers as the winds and rain come. We are personally 2 hours from the coast but will get some very serious rain and wind. We have 100+ cattle and 133,000 chickens as well as the horses and our families . We are not in a position to leave the area.Thank you,Gina

DEAR GINA D,WE ALWAYS PRAY TO THE ALMIGHTY THE MOST GRACIOUS TO HELP ALL HIS PEOPLE IN DISTRESS AND RELIEVE THEM OF HARM AND DISTRESS,AMEEN RABB3ALAMEEN MAY GOD AS WELL TAKES SPECIAL CARE OF YOU,YOUR FAMILY AND YOUR LOVED ONES

Thanks to you all. At this point it is looking VERY bad for all in the affected area. The winds are over 160 miles and hour and should increase more before landfall . Please pray for all in the way of this storm. This is the one we have been dreading for years. Gina

You are in my thoughts and prayers during this time! I know how scary it is for you (and the worry you have for your animals) and will pray for the best.

Even though I'm still here in Virginia, my husband is living in New Orleans (he's on the faculty at the University of New Orleans). He decided to evacuate yesterday morning to Tyler, Texas and because he left early, he had no traffic to deal with, thank goodness.

We were in New Orleans during a Category 2 hurricane and it was awful. The winds were so strong, our apartment building shook. Although the pumps in the New Orleans area handle the flow of storm water well, I just don't know what will happen during a Category 5.

I will be keeping you, and everyone, in the path of Hurricane Katrina, that are not able to leave their homes, in my thoughts and prayers.

I hope Oliver and Aleksi won't mind, but I thought I'd post a link to one of our local TV news stations in New Orleans. This way those people that are not familiar with New Orleans (and the surrounding areas) can keep track of what's going on "in" the city of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

Gina, you are definitely in our prayers here. We live on the Gulf coast in Florida and the back-toback hurricanes here still affect us. What are you going to do with your horses? From all of the disaster animal response meetings I have been to here, the advice is to put the horses out of the barn where they are not in danger of collapsing structure. We put waterproof ID tags with our contact/address on the halters and put duct tape around the tag and they were out for all four storms. Thanks be to God, we had no injuries and they seemed to know where and how to stand in the storms. Instinct was very noticeable as we had several tornadoes and they woudl shift to another area just before the dervish came through. When Hurricane Andrew devastated the Miami area. pregnant horses actually broke through pool cages to jump into the water and normalize their internal pressure - pretty amazing how they are equipped. God be with you and you are in our prayers and thoughts.